Trick or Treat Bag

I had a couple of odd balls of yarn lying around on the nightstand the other night, and made V a  little trick or treat bag.

She's been carrying it around the house pretending to trick or treat for a couple of days. She's going to be a little pumpkin this year, and is so excited.

What are your kiddos dressing up as? (If they are...)

Halloween Sensory Bin

I put together a Halloween themed sensory bin for the kids this year, and thought I'd share it. There are lots of things to sort, tweeze, and pretend with. V's been playing with it daily, with the addition of a few toy Pokemon, or other little figures, to "rescue" from the "spooky spiders."

Halloween sensory bin.

Here are some of the contents and sources:

Black beans, as the basic filler.

Alphabet pasta, dyed orange.

Halloween erasers, from Target and Dollar Tree.

Halloween pom poms, from Michael's.

Spider rings and plastic spiders, from Dollar Tree.

Plastic eyeballs, from Dollar Tree.

Plastic mini pumpkins, and wooden Halloween themed buttons, from our stash.

Easy Glittered Pumpkins

Is there anything that can't be improved upon with a coating of Martha Stewart glitter?

Inspired by these pumpkins of Martha's, I picked up a few packages of sad looking little gourds from Dollar Tree to transform.

Dollar Tree gourds.

A couple of quick coats of glitter, and I had a fun little centerpiece. (I also had another ginormous glittery mess in the kitchen, but it was worth it.)

Gllittered Dollar Tree gourds.

T Shirt Week-Day 2: Pumpkin Shirts

DIY pumpkin shirt.

Today's shirt was made essentially using the same technique as yesterday's. I tinkered around with the sizing of this template, and used it as my pattern. My cost on these was a buck a piece. Cute, easy, and quick.

L modeling his shirt, complete with messy morning hair.

I made one for each of the kids. I'm determined to get some cute Halloween pics of the both of them together, at some point. (Am I the only one who cannot take a good picture of both kids at the same time? They're never looking in the same direction, or else their eyes are closed, or their mouth is open...) 

Cute Thrifty Halloween Favor bags

Even though it's still not feeling very fall-ish here, Halloween is approaching.

When I stopped in Dollar Tree last week, and saw these orange totes, I thought they'd make cute little party favor bags. (L does not like trick or treating, so we have a little party here, with our immediate family every year.)

I'm too shaky to freehand anything with paint, so what I ended up doing was drawing the shapes onto the bags with a pencil, and then painting over it. (Don't forget to put some  wax paper or something inside the bag while you paint, so it doesn't soak through to the other side.) Alternatively, you could probably just draw the features on with a Sharpie.

I think they turned out cute, they're reusable, and considering I already had the paint on hand, these were uber cheap to make.

Easy $6 Halloween Tablecloth

Bandanna tablecloth.

I dusted off my sewing machine, (literally, I haven't sewed in months,) and whipped up a bandanna tablecloth for Halloween. It's an instant gratification project, the edges are already hemmed. (The bandannas didn't line up perfectly, because they aren't exactly square, but who cares, right?)

Bandanna tablecloth, as shown in my partially demolished kitchen.

I sort of like this idea for other holidays too...

A Halloween Recap

Mario Pumpkin Stencil, from  http://www.zombiepumpkins.com/

Holidays are tough for kids with SPD.
(Actually, as an adult with some sensory issues, I confess that last night was a lot for me to swallow too. That boy and I are a lot alike. )
L was overwhelmed with the 20ish people in our small house, with the noise, with the chaos that most people would perceive as festive.

Severed finger and spider cupcakes, anyone?

There were several meltdowns about whether or not to wear a costume, to go trick or treating, etc. It must be hard to be a little kid, and feel so conflicted about things that are supposed to be fun. In the end, he wore half a costume, and tearfully went trick or treating of his own accord.  He later reported that he had fun.
V, the polar opposite, was thrilled to get to dress up, thrilled to be the center of attention, excited to tell everyone "Happy Halloween!"
It's hard to know how to provide both kids, who have such different personalities, with what they need at any given moment.
I'm not sure we hit the mark this time. I'm going to be thinking about what we can do to make Christmas easier for L...

V, the self styled "Princess Toadstool," and "Super Mario"

Week in Review: Halloween & Flexibilty

This week, we continued with our Halloween theme, making decorations out of a neat old activity book from the 80's.

We did a little Candy Corn math, which was a hit, particularly the subtraction part, since it meant L got to eat the candy.

We read and re- read our favorite Halloween books, with an ever increasing amount of help from L, as he learns to read more and more words.

Other than that, we did a lot of workbook work again, at L's request.

Although I did virtually a whole year worth of planning over the summer, I think it's time for me to re-evaluate our lesson plans in light of what we're actually doing here. I planned the year with minimal workbooks, and lots of fun hands on stuff. As it turns out L loves doing workbooks, and isn't much into a lot of the things I thought would be fun. I have to keep reminding myself that part of the reason we wanted to homeschool was to tailor the learning to his interests. Although we're not going to only do workbooks, it looks like we are going to be doing a lot more of them than I had planned, and lighter on the "fun" unit studies.

So that's our week in review, and somehow I didn't manage to take any pictures of us doing anything fun this week, but we did have fun. Just not the kind of fun I'd planned.  

WFMW Curriculum Share

I'm pretty sure I've posted about Curriculum Share before, but I thought it warranted another mention. Curriculum Share started out several months ago as something along the lines of a Paperback Swap for homeschoolers. People post things they have to offer, and other folks can request them, paying only for shipping. It's really a neat resource, and I've participated on both sides, as a giver and a receiver.
As it's evolved, more and more forums have been added. There's now a forum open for offering and requesting toys in giftable condition for Christmas. (What a great way to recycle and save some money, in a time when we're all looking to save a few bucks.) There's a couponing forum for sharing deals, a crafty forum for sharing ideas, and many others.
While the membership at Curriculum Share is growing rapidly, it still has that friendly, just-starting-out feeling. If you're a homeschooler, a preschool at home-er, or a family contemplating homeschooling, I'd highly recommend you come check it out.
Curriculum Share works for me. For more WFMW posts, check out http://www.wearethatfamily.com/.

Are You Thinking about Halloween Yet?

It's time to start thinking about Halloween again.
L has decided that he doesn't want to dress up as anything this year, and doesn't want to go trick or treating. I've decided to roll with it, and not try to convince him otherwise. In previous years, we've persuaded him to do both, but to be honest he didn't have much fun. It's just not his thing. We'll be having a "party" for him instead. (By party I mean we'll be having cupcakes and candy corn, and watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.)
V has decided to be essentially the same thing she was last year, a fairy princess. We picked up a little dress-up outfit at Tuesday Morning that she just had to have, for about five bucks. Here's a link to last year's costume, which cost me a whopping $3, if you're interested in dressing up your little fairy princess on the cheap.
If you're looking for other cool stuff to make this Halloween, you could whip up some throw pillows, like the ones I made last year, or check out some of these cool tutes I've run across recently.

Vintage Halloween Garland, by Until Wednesday Calls (I actually made a variation of this a couple of weeks ago, and it's hanging in my dining room.)

These cool Halloween paper cuttings by The Shishi Girl (I confess that I attempted to make the bat garland but it didn't turn out quite right. My hands aren't very steady. Hers are great though.)

Cool printable Halloween alphabet, by Crafts Jr (Your kiddos could use these to make a pretty cool Halloween banner, or spell out their names.)

What are you planning on making for Halloween this year?

Halloween Soap From Dollar Tree Molds

Dollar Tree seasonally stocks holiday themed silicone ice cube trays. I picked up some Christmas Trees last winter, and some hearts in the spring. Last time I was there, I saw these Halloween molds, and had to snap up a couple of them.

Skulls and Pumpkins

These have several uses other than ice cube making. They're great for candy molds, you can use them for molded crayons, and best of all, they make cool soap molds. (I haven't tried it, but they'd probably also make cool play doh molds for the kids...)

I made some orange and black pumpkin and skull soaps to put in a mason jar for Halloween, in the bathroom. They turned out really cute, and I tried at least six times to take a good picture of them, but couldn't come up with anything decent.

Take my word for it, and go pick them up, while they still have some.

Pumpkin Pillows

I made each kiddo one of these pillows, out of a little remnant of orange fleece, and black felt. The pillows were 12 by 12, before sewing, and I sewed the features on with the sewing machine.

Cute. Easy. Cheap. My favorite kind of project.

Purple Fairy Princess Costume

Yesterday I finished baby V's Halloween costume. She's going to be a little purple fairy princess. I got the wings and tutu from the Dollar Tree. (I should seriously be on their payroll, as much as I talk about them...) I could have made both myself I suppose, but this was a huge time and money saver. I purchased the little wand at Target, in the Dollar Section. They had crowns too, but V won't wear one, which is why I had thought about making her a purple felt crown, and then decided against it. She'll be wearing a purple bow, if I can get her to leave it in. I tie dyed the onesie and cotton tights, which we already had.
My total cash outlay for the costume was $3, plus tax.







Stay tuned. We're going to be making a Transformers Optimus Prime costume for L, also partly out of Dollar Tree components.